Got to Kyoto today, We left early in the morning and made it here by 1 or 2 o clock or so. Slept most of the train ride. Since we couldn't check into our youth hostel until 4, we walked the hour or so from the train station to there to see the city. It was really pretty quiet in that area. The directions to the hotel were really hard to follow because they started from some arbitrary bus station and streets in Japan rarely have names unless they are really big. The directions were
"At Gojozaka bus stop, turn right to face flyover(overpass), take first left. (After getting off the bus go back in the dirrecton from where the bus came. Cross the street at the first traffic light and walk up the hill.) Walk up hill about 250m. You will reach a 3way fork in the road. Take the middle one. Walk another 250m, you will see a large car and coach(bus) park on the left. Opposite the car park, look down steps for Hanakiya sign in the quiet back street."
Hanakiya Inn
Hanakiya Inn
Somehow we found the place and then just went walking around because when we got close to the hotel it was suddenly super busy. There were a lot of shops and a temple off in the distance, so we headed for that. Right as we got to the temple, a couple of Japanese girls that are studying English here in Kyoto asked us if we could practice English with them, and we practiced Japanese as well. They were super friendly. One of them wants to be an English teacher in Japan, the other a tour guide for foreigners. We made arrangements to get some food with them tomorrow, hopefully they can show us around a bit too. Then we checked out the temple.
The white cylinder tower in the distance is Kyoto Tower Hotel, which was right in front of the station, and we walked to where I took this picture from.
We got back to the bed and breakfast to check in and it's run by a really nice lady that caters to English speaking travellers, but she was happy to see that we knew a lot of Japanese too. She's really nice too. There's a windows millennium edition computer here running IE 5 that we can use, it works pretty sweet.
After showering because we couldn't this morning when the hot water wasn't on at Nishikawa Heights, we tried to go out but it was pouring rain. Rainy season in Japan confirmed. We got some snacks at the convenience store and came back here until it stopped raining. Then we walked to the busy part of town (another 30 min) to get some real food. We found a small shop with a few nice owners that was decently cheap. I got some vegetable tempura for the first time since I've been in Japan. After that, we kept walking down this nice street by the river the restaurant was on, but suddenly it turned into the red light district. There were all kinds of shops that had men standing in the doorways trying to catch customers, and signs that showed scantily clothed women, and advertised prices of something like 100$ for 30 min or so. 30 min of what I'm not sure.
Just off that street we hit the really busy part of town with tons of shops and covered walkways which was good because it was raining a little still. Nothing was open really because it was pretty late, but there were plenty of upscale shops like brooks brothers or zara. We found a starbucks and sat down for a coffee for a little bit. We haven't yet found a good place in Kanazawa for good hot coffee. When they closed, we walked the 30 min back home.?Maybe we'll go back again some day when things are open.